One woman was killed and 12 others were injured today in a knife attack in a busy mall in Beijing. Police in the capital quickly released an announcement through social media saying that the situation was under control, and that a suspect was in custody.
As of late evening, the Beijing police notice entirely dominated information about the incident on mainstream news sites and on social media. This short news piece from People’s Daily Online also cites as its source “the official Weibo account of the Beijing police.”
But even as news based on the police notice remained on the official accounts of some state media and local Beijing media, such as this post from Beijing Evening News and this from the Global Times, sharing of the notice and comment from some users was subject to deletion on Weibo.
The following post from “Ji Siliu” (吉四六), a former journalist for The Beijing News with more than 77,000 fans on Weibo, was deleted sometime after 4:35PM Beijing time today. It responded to a post of the notice from Beijing police, also for some reason deleted, by adding an apparent detail about events at the scene of the attack.
“I saw a security guard rushing in with wooden stool,” “Ji Siliu” wrote.
看到一个拿着板凳就上的保安。。。。
CMP Staff
The China Media Project
